Foenkinos Charlotte Quotes & Sayings

In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one's position, state it bravely, and then act boldly. Action brings with it its own courage, its own energy, a growth of self-confidence that can be acquired in no other way — Eleanor Roosevelt

My ideal type of women? A person who is completely into me. It's fine even if she's so into me that it's a bit strange. She doesn't spend time with friends, she doesn't go out, but instead is unconditionally attached to me. I'm not joking. I really want someone like that. — Lee Joon

All the names of the ultimate truth are
given by human beings. Whether you call it Allah or God or Jehovah or Rama or Krishna,
these names are given by human beings and hence they cannot be eternal. You are playing
one sided game. The truth has nothing to do with these names. — Rahul Karn

My roommate is a 240-pound homicidal hermit. For dinner he's fixing me a dead fox he scraped off the highway near Ponchatoula, and after that we're taking a leaky tin boat out on a windy lake to spy on some semi-retarded fishermen. Don't you wish you were here? — Carl Hiaasen

It's a pretty sure thing that the player's bat is what speaks loudest when it's contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word. — Brooks Robinson

Write what you want to write; don't fear about who will read it. — Debasish Mridha

Dortmunder and the Major strolled away down the long corridor overlooking customs, with the duty-free shops on one side of the corridor and on the other side the railing where people can stand and look down at their returning relatives and visiting foreign friends being degraded. — Donald E. Westlake

Life is like a game of chess ... there are many moves possible, but each move determines your next move ... where you wind up is the sum total of all your past moves ... but first you have to make some kind of move. — Mort Walker

There are now little brass plaques on the ground outside this address.
These are Stolpersteine.
Tributes to the victims of the Holocaust.
There are many of them in Berlin, especially in Charlottenburg.
They are not easy to spot.
You must walk with your head down, seeking memories between the cobblestones.
In front of 15 Wielandstrasse, three names can be read.
Paula, Albert, and Charlotte.
But on the wall, there is only one commemorative plaque.
The one for Charlotte Salomon. — David Foenkinos

Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country. — C.S. Lewis

Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span Where weeping Virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he Must live that would God's face see Which angels guard, and with it play, Angels! which foul men drive away. — Henry Vaughan

For years, I took notes.
I pored over her work incessantly.
I quoted or mentioned Charlotte in several of my novels.
I tried to write this book so many times.
But how?
Should I be present?
Should I fictionalize her story?
What form should my obsession take?
I began, I tried, then I gave up.
I couldn't manage to string two sentences together.
At every point, I felt blocked.
Impossible to go on.
It was a physical sensation, an oppression.
I felt the need to move to the next line in order to breathe.

So, I realized that I had to write it like this. — David Foenkinos

I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it - at least culturally. — Hooman Majd

Faced with her mother's mood swings, Charlotte is docile.
She tames her melancholy.
Is this how one becomes an artist?
By growing accustomed to the madness of others? — David Foenkinos

Thirteen years separate the death of her mother from that of her aunt.
And another thirteen passed between her mother's death and her grandmother's.
yes, exactly the same time lapse.
And all three died in almost exactly the same way.
A leap into the void.
Death has three different ages.
The girl, the mother, the grandmother.
So no age is worth living.
In the train that rolls toward the camp, Charlotte makes a calculation.
1940 + 13 = 1953.
So 1953 will be the year of her suicide.
If she doesn't die before that. — David Foenkinos

She must disappear for a time from the human surface,
And sacrifice everything for this,
To recreate herself from the depths of her world. — David Foenkinos

I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse. — H.L. Mencken

His were always lighthearted notes from the places they'd visited, scrawled in the limited space on the back of the cards, whereas hers tended to be longer and slightly rambling, unrestricted by the confines of paper. But sitting there with the cursor blinking at him, he wasn't sure what to say. There was something too immediate about an e-mail, the idea that she might get it in mere moments, that just one click of the mouse would make it appear on her screen in an instant, like magic. He realized how much he preferred the safety of a letter, the physicality of it, the distance it had to cross on its way from here to there, which felt honest and somehow more real. — Jennifer E. Smith